The Lords' Day (retail)

‘But . . .’

  ‘A little change of plan, Mr Gul. I’ll let those gentlemen with the rifles explain it all to you.’

  1.25 p.m.

  It took a little time for Harry to emerge from the chamber. He wasn’t in his best shape. He’d made a mess of his elbow during the fight and the face wound had opened up once more. It took a while before the medics could staunch the bleeding. They’d wanted to take him off to hospital but Harry had refused, so they’d taken him back to the little post office where his clothes were waiting and tried to clean him up. It wasn’t an easy job. It was while they were fussing over him that he saw Tibbetts hovering in the background.

  ‘Think you could do with some time off,’ the policeman said. ‘You look bloody awful.’

  ‘I won’t ask you to look at the other guy.’

  ‘You did good, Harry.’

  ‘We both did.’

  ‘If you’re up to it, I’d like to take you back for a short debrief. While everything’s fresh. I know it’s a lot to ask but—’

  ‘Later, Mike. Got a call to make first.’

  ‘Where, may I ask?’

  ‘Mel.’

  ‘Ah. Of course. I’m sorry. Should’ve realised. I’ll organise a car. And you’ll need some new clothes. I’ve got a fresh set waiting for you back at the office. You’ll forgive a little official larceny on your wardrobe, I trust.’

  ‘There’s something I want in return, Mike.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘I want you to look into the family connections of everyone involved in the siege.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Harry said, wincing as the medic probed his swollen cheek. ‘It’s just that this whole affair’s been like a game of Happy Families. Something’s nagging at me, at the back of my mind, and if ever I get rid of this headache . . .’

  ‘Harry, relax. It’s over.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘For you, yes.’

  ‘Please, Mike, just do it, will you?’

  Harry gave him an obstinate, one-eyed stare and the policeman sighed. ‘You’re a stubborn sod. But, I suppose, just this once . . .’

  ‘Thanks.’

  A few minutes later they were being driven back to New Scotland Yard.

  ‘Now there’s a sight to behold,’ the policeman muttered.

  ‘Where?’ asked Harry. His left eye was completely shut and much of the world was passing him by. He stretched his neck, causing him to wince with pain, and what he saw made him grimace even more. Tricia Willcocks was on College Green, a strip of grass adjacent to the House of Lords much used by the media. She was standing before a vast array of cameras, television lights and microphones, giving interviews. She was animated, gesticulating, pointing in the direction of the Lords then throwing her arms about as if embracing everyone who had been in it.

  ‘Normal service has resumed, I see,’ Harry said. He started laughing, shaking with uncontrollable mirth, and he carried on laughing, no matter how much it hurt.

  It was late in the afternoon before Mel returned to her home, carrying a small overnight bag. She stood on the doorstep in a shaft of pale early winter sunlight and looked beautiful, he thought. Harry watched from the back seat of the car as she scrabbled for her door keys; she could never remember the difference between the front door and back door key, let alone the key for the cupboard under the stairs. She was still fumbling when Harry climbed out from the car.

  She started in alarm, dropping the keys. Not even his fresh set of clothes could hide the damage. The bruising, the swelling, the wound trying to burst from behind the stitches. His left arm was in a sling, with broken fingers sticking out from the open end. And he was limping.

  ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  ‘Busy day at the Lords.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Lords,’ he repeated, standing on the pavement below the doorstep. He bent to retrieve her keys. He noticed she had a new fob.

  ‘You were there?’ she gasped.

  ‘In my underwear.’

  ‘That was you?’ As realisation dawned, her manner changed, beginning to soften. ‘I didn’t know, I couldn’t tell, not from the television pictures.’ She stepped forward, instinctively, protectively. ‘Are you OK, darling?’

  ‘I guess what you see is pretty much what you get.’ He tried to smile, but it hurt. ‘That’s why I was a little late last night. I did come. But you’d already left.’

  She took it as accusation and protested. ‘I didn’t know,’ she cried. ‘I was sitting there feeling like Little Orphan Annie and . . . I’m so sorry.’

  ‘But not sorry enough to call and find out.’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’ Her cheeks lit briefly with embarrassment and she hid her face, turning once more to the door and to fumble with her keys.

  ‘We need to talk, Mel.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You know what. The baby.’

  She faced him, looking down on him from the doorstep, taking a deep breath. ‘Harry, there is no baby.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’ve just come back from the clinic. It’s over.’

  So that was where she had been, since this morning, at least.

  ‘But you said tomorrow . . .’ he protested.

  ‘And you said you wanted to talk about it last night!’ she spat back.

  ‘How could you?’

  ‘There was a cancellation,’ she muttered distractedly as though they were discussing diaries.

  ‘It was our child, Mel, our decision. You had no right!’

  ‘I had every right!’

  ‘And what about my rights? As a father?’ He was pounding his chest with his good hand as his hopes melted into thin, unsustaining air.

  ‘Oh, Harry!’ Suddenly she was wailing, crying herself, her eyes shut tight in shame. ‘How can I tell you? You know how it’s been between us, but . . . please believe me. I never meant to hurt you.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  She was trembling, having to force the words from her. ‘The pregnancy. It wasn’t yours. Sorry.’

  He stood on the pavement, unable to speak as at last he was overwhelmed by pain.

  ‘It wasn’t yours,’ she repeated, more firmly. ‘Now do you under stand?’

  Oh, yes, now he understood, many things, but far too late.

  Like an animal drags himself off to a cave to nurse his wounds, Harry found himself in his favourite French bistro. L’Artiste Muscle occupied a corner of the secluded Victorian enclave of Shepherd Market. It had few pretensions, was minuscule, and in warm weather spilled out on to the pavement, yet no matter how crowded it was, they could always find a place for Harry.

  He arrived late, almost the last, eating on his own, the Toulouse sausage and flageolet beans, easy enough to manage one-handed and a sensible foundation on which to build the monumental bender that was about to follow. The chef, Marcel, wiped his hands and sat to share his second bottle.

  ‘You have been in the wars, Harry,’ the Frenchman said, raising his glass in salute.

  ‘Almost got me this time.’

  ‘Your lover’s husband catch you out?’

  ‘No. My wife.’ It was said in a tone that stripped the humour from the night.

  ‘I argue with my wife all the time,’ Marcel said, ‘but not like this.’

  They drank.

  ‘So what do you argue with her about?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Oh, only unimportant things. Money. My mistress.’

  ‘You have kids?’

  ‘We argue about them all the time, too, but that is different.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘We have three of them. We argue not because we disagree about them, but because we want so much for them. Too much, I’m sure, but somehow kids take over your lives. And then there is not enough room left for ourselves.’

  ‘We are that sad generation, Marcel. Screwed up by our parents, screwed up by our kids.??
?

  ‘You got kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then perhaps you can manage another bottle?’

  ‘With a little help.’

  ‘It is yours, my friend.’ Marcel reached for the third bottle, driving home the corkscrew until its arms were lifted up in surrender.

  Harry’s head was beginning to pound, not just from the alcohol but the effects of everything he had been through. He was also still a little deaf from the explosions and the battering he had taken; he leaned forward to catch what Marcel was saying.

  ‘Without my kids, I think my life would be impossible,’ Marcel said. ‘All I would have left is my wife and little Claire over there’ – he nodded in the direction of a waitress, far too young and nubile for Marcel’s good, who was washing glasses. ‘I would go mad.’

  ‘Now, if she were my daughter . . .’ He shook his head in uncertainty.

  ‘If she were your daughter, I believe I would be the one looking like you right now,’ Marcel chuckled. ‘Our children become our guiding stars, our reason for being, our sanity, and without them – pouff!’ He made a gesture at his head with his fingers. ‘Take my children from me, and you rip away the meaning of my life.’

  ‘I’ve seen that myself, these last few hours.’

  ‘Yes, it is a great difficulty. With your kids you lose all your money, without them you would lose your mind. Fatherhood is a form of madness. Why else would we even try to commit ourselves to just one woman?’

  They laughed until they were halfway through Harry’s third bottle, and his mind was slowly draining. Marcel had moved on to more important matters, something to do with the prospects of his football team, but Harry paid little attention. His brain was slipping gear, going into reverse – it was something the Frenchman had said, it was important, perhaps fiendishly so, but Harry couldn’t under stand why, or remember what it was. Thoughts moved around his head like tectonic plates, crashing into each other and causing earthquakes in his mind. Or was it just the rehearsal for the hangover to come?

  Marcel was still holding forth, leaving Harry stranded somewhere between Stamford Bridge and the Champions League. He knew now that there was something he had seen, or sensed, that was the key to unravelling the plot, but every time he tried to concentrate and hold on to a passing thought he realised he was too far gone. It was like trying to catch clouds. He needed his wits, but if he sobered up he was terrified that in the morning he would remember nothing. So he stretched for the bottle and refilled his empty glass.

  It was late the following afternoon when Tibbetts and Harry called upon the ambassador in his residence. US marines stood at the gates as they were swung open to admit the visitors to the vast grounds set in the heart of Regent’s Park. O’Malley the butler opened the door. ‘He’s in the garden, sirs, taking a breath of the air.’

  The setting was magnificent, the trees dressed in their full autumnal glory, but Paine seemed to have aged, withered a little since the previous day but, in their own way, each of them was older. The ambassador was throwing a stick for his red setter to retrieve, the dog chasing through a thick carpet of chestnut leaves like a train through fresh snow, setting the stick down at his master’s feet before repeating the whole process time and again. ‘Much like a diplomat,’ Paine reflected as they approached. ‘Always fetching and carrying, doing your master’s will.’

  ‘I think you do a whole lot more than that, ambassador,’ Tibbetts said.

  ‘Perhaps. I try, at least. So what can I do for you, Commander Tibbetts, Mr Jones?’ he asked as with a slow, deliberate tread he followed his dog though the slush of leaves.

  ‘In the first place I want to thank you for everything you did for us,’ the policeman began.

  ‘I appreciate that, commander, but really I did no more than many others – and far less than Mr Jones here. We all owe him more than I suspect we can properly express.’ He turned to Harry. ‘I hope I’m not speaking out of turn, but even as we speak, Washington is scratching its collective head to find a suitable means of expressing its gratitude.’

  ‘I have a friend who wants a parking space at the BBC. Anything you can do to drop a good word in . . .’

  The ambassador laughed. ‘You British!’ He threw the stick once more for his dog. ‘A parking space? Now, if you were American, you’d be demanding at least a helicopter pad. And something suitably large to put on it.’

  He led them back inside, the red setter tracking dutifully behind. The animal was both well groomed and well trained, the sign of a clear-minded master. Tea and coffee were waiting on a side table but he passed them by. ‘It’s a little early, I know, but after yesterday . . .’ He poured three large whiskies, then handed the glasses round. ‘You’re not on duty, are you, commander? Anyway, your colleagues can’t arrest you here, this is United States territory,’ he laughed.

  ‘It was really quite a day, ambassador,’ the policeman replied, taking the glass but not drinking.

  ‘And not yet finished,’ Paine responded. The dog settled dutifully at his feet. ‘I hear rumours – wild speculation, no doubt – that the Prime Minister has made up his mind to resign his office. He intends to take responsibility for the whole ungodly mess and fall upon his sword.’

  ‘A politician accepting responsibility,’ Harry mused. ‘Unusual, but in this instance entirely appropriate. Almost noble.’

  ‘It won’t have escaped you, Mr Jones, that there’s an element of classic tragedy in all this. Not just the personal but the political. Who’d have thought it possible that in one afternoon the foundation stone on which our Western world has been built could be ripped from its place? Britain and America, torn apart, the Special Relationship consigned to the garbage heap of history. It’s terrifying to think how close the terrorists came to destroying everything.’

  ‘It gets even more curious,’ Harry added. ‘You’ll have heard by now of the Bulgakov connection?’

  The American nodded, rolling his crystal glass between the palms of his hands.

  ‘There’s something else we’ve learned,’ Harry continued, reaching for the last and most brilliant of Sloppy’s many nuggets that had been dug out from the mines of Canary Wharf. ‘All the dummy companies he set up to exploit the markets and make monkeys out of his Russian colleagues led back ultimately to just one account. It was set up recently in Switzerland, under the name of Boyarny Deny Zavodi. Roughly translated from the Russian, it means Lords’ Day Enterprises.’

  ‘Extraordinary. Quite extraordinary.’

  The policeman picked up the story. ‘We’ve come to the conclusion that Bulgakov never had any intention of getting away with the scam; in fact, strange as it may seem, he all but insisted on being caught. We got there much quicker than he might have expected: it would normally take weeks rather than a few hours to unravel the threads, but he must have known we’d get there sooner or later. He didn’t hide his activities well, not nearly as well as he might. And that’s the point. He wanted us to know.’

  ‘He wanted to get caught? But why?’

  ‘He was sick. Had very little time left. Couldn’t possibly have used the money he already had, let alone a new fortune. Do you know it amounted to almost a hundred million pounds in one afternoon? We’ll freeze the accounts, of course, get most of it back, but some of the Russian oligarchs took a real pounding. They won’t recover so easily.’

  It was Harry’s turn once more. ‘The oligarchs were his enemies, they’d turned against him, squeezed him out of the action, and he was out for revenge. So he not only wanted to rob them, he had to be sure they’d know it was Levrenti Bulgakov who did it. He intended to die laughing at them and continue laughing from beyond the grave.’

  ‘What sort of man would do that?’

  ‘Someone who was eaten up by frustration, a lonely man who was burning away inside with a sense of injustice,’ Harry suggested. ‘There’s almost no knowing what people like that might do.’

  ‘Did you ever know Levrenti Bulgakov, ambassa
dor?’ Tibbetts asked casually.

  Paine frowned, his forehead split in concentration. ‘No, I don’t believe I ever did. Although you meet a lot of strange people in London, of course.’

  ‘We were thinking you might have met him elsewhere,’ the policeman continued, ‘when you were an assistant director of the CIA some years back. You had responsibilities for central Asia, didn’t you? We wondered if that’s where your paths might have crossed.’

  Slowly Paine rose to his feet; his glass was empty, he refilled it. ‘I see you’re not drinking, commander. On duty after all?’

  ‘Bulgakov,’ the policeman pressed.

  Paine leaned against the mantel of the fireplace. ‘I can’t remember meeting him,’ he said, his voice a shade less convivial, his features more alert. ‘Anyway, the whole business is done with.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Tibbetts said.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘But it doesn’t explain who murdered him.’

  ‘Or how he managed to break the security system at the State Opening so comprehensively,’ Harry added.

  ‘But he was KGB. Surely . . .’

  Harry was shaking his head. ‘He couldn’t possibly have done it on his own. He needed help, from the inside. Someone who knew how things worked.’

  ‘Foxhunters and feminists break into Parliament to stage their demonstrations; I don’t see why it should be so different for trained terrorists.’ Paine’s fingers were drumming in impatience. ‘And as we were discussing, it brought our two countries to the point of total rupture. That’s a Russian plot if ever I saw one. Lenin would be proud of him.’

  ‘But it was more than that, and yet not quite that at all,’ Harry persisted. ‘This seemed to be as much about the sons of Britain and America as much as the countries themselves – as if they needed to be punished, too. Magnus and William-Henry.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For being the sons of important and powerful people.’

  ‘But who would do something like that? What could possibly be their motivation?’

  ‘A sense of overwhelming injustice, of a great wrong that needed to be put right. That’s what we were talking about, weren’t we? Perhaps a sense that these people had no right to their sons.’